Cheney Should Be Investigated For Her Corruption, Not Rewarded
President Joe Biden rewarded disgraced ex-Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney with one of the nation’s highest civilian honors on Thursday for her work undermining democracy through the illegally established and since-disbanded Jan. 6 Select Committee.
After sources close to Biden recently told The Washington Post he regretted that the Justice Department (DOJ) did not move more aggressively to jail top political opponents, Biden awarded Cheney the Presidential Citizens Medal. He also gave the medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chaired the House probe. The Presidential Citizens Medal is second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom in prestige.
Fox News contributor Guy Benson reminded followers on X that Thompson, the long-time Mississippi lawmaker, “refused to certify George W. Bush’s 2004 victory in Ohio.”
According to Newsweek, Democrats also objected to more states in the 2016 election than Republicans did in 2020, but none faced criminal charges. Democrats on the Jan. 6 panel, however, referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution and successfully incarcerated former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for their refusal to comply with requests from the partisan probe.
House Republicans who ran their own investigation into the Capitol riot and the ensuing cover-up for then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to deploy the National Guard issued an additional criminal referral from the Jan. 6 saga last month. The House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, led by Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk, recommended that Cheney face a criminal probe from DOJ investigators for “witness tampering.”
As members of Pelosi’s panel became desperate to dramatize the Jan. 6 hearings in the midterm election year, Cheney started coordinating with ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson using the encrypted Signal app to circumvent Hutchinson’s attorney, Stefan Passantino. Hutchinson suddenly went from a benign fact-witness without much to offer Jan. 6 investigators to the committee’s breakout star, offering outlandish testimony about then-President Trump attempting to violently hijack a vehicle from his Secret Service detail so he could personally riot at the Capitol. Hutchinson’s blockbuster claims were immediately discredited by her own sources following her appearance on Capitol Hill and were further undermined in Loudermilk’s nearly 130-page review of the panel’s work, which was published in December.
“It is noteworthy that the drastic change in Hutchinson’s story occurred after Representative Cheney directed Hutchinson to fire her attorney and hire counsel that Representative Cheney suggested,” Loudermilk’s report read. “Hutchinson did not think this incident was worth mentioning during the first two interviews, nor in conversation with her attorney, nor in conversation with her closest friends.”
As Hutchinson prepared to testify, Cheney’s committee targeted Passantino with an operation attempting to strip him of his law license over claims he coached Hutchinson to lie. Passantino was cleared of any misconduct following multiple investigations from ethics watchdogs and has filed multiple lawsuits of his own against the perpetrators. His complaint against Cheney and a $67 million lawsuit against the federal government are now the last remaining open opportunities for court discovery into the ex-Wyoming lawmaker’s conduct.
Investigators on Loudermilk’s team highlighted the “irony” of Cheney facing potential charges over witness interference after she “spoke out forcefully against individuals who endeavored to influence witness testimony in the Select Committee.” When Hutchinson had finished her public testimony, Cheney closed the hearing with threats against anyone who seeks to manipulate witnesses.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney said. The next day, in comments highlighted in Loudermilk’s report, the Jan. 6 Committee vice chair told ABC News that her panel would “make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, recommending that anybody attempting to influence witness testimony before the [Select] Committee be prosecuted for witness tampering.”
Loudermilk’s report characterized Cheney’s remarks as another textbook example of projection.
“Whether lacking in self-awareness or to obfuscate her own furtive behavior, it is consistent with the Select Committee’s practice of lodging accusations against President Trump and those associated with him as if those accusations are fact, when the Select Committee itself was engaged in the very behavior it had accused of President Trump,” the report said.